What’s Happening to the Republican Party II

The anonymously financed conservative groups that have played such a crucial role this campaign year are starting a carefully coordinated final push to deliver control of Congress to Republicans, shifting money among some 80 House races they are monitoring day by day. … Many of the conservative groups say they have been trading information through weekly strategy sessions and regular conference calls. They have divided up races to avoid duplication, the groups say, and to ensure that their money is spread around to put Democrats on the defensive in as many districts and states as possible — and, more important, lock in whatever gains they have delivered for the Republicans so far.

“We carpet-bombed for two months in 82 races, now it’s sniper time,” said Rob Collins, president of American Action Network, which is one of the leading Republican groups this campaign season and whose chief executive is Norm Coleman, the former senator from Minnesota. “You’re looking at the battle field and saying, ‘Where can we marginally push — where can we close a few places out?’ ”

This highlights the questions that I was trying to get at in my earlier post, and raises some possibilities that I didn’t consider. The basic claim I am trying to make is straightforward: that party organization (and to a certain extent party goals) depend on the machineries which are available for fundraising and for getting the message out. This is a pretty well-accepted claim in political science. The reason that local party organizations with ward captains etc dissipated is because political entrepreneurs within these parties decided that TV advertising was more efficient. One of the major reasons for the increased role of conservative activists within the Republican party over the last thirty years was the mailing list system pioneered by Richard Viguerie (which eventually turned into a racket – but that is a different story). Mailing lists were used to raise money, to target incumbents, and generally to shift the party’s center of gravity towards the right. As Dave Karpf (whose dissertation talks about these issues a lot) points out, MoveOn (PDF) provides another potential disruptive model. However, the Obama campaign deliberately sought to clamp down on MoveOn and other independent groups during the 2008 campaign, and these groups have been having a considerably harder time playing defense of a sitting administration that they don’t always agree with, than offense against a Republican administration that they disagree with bitterly. The Obama model – of fundraising and organization through tailored and relatively tightly administered sites – provides a different model again.

After Citizens United, I would argue that you can plausibly identify three organizational models (or, perhaps more accurately, organizational families with certain shared characteristics) out there.

The first is the uncoordinated group party. This is the 2003-2004 Dean primary campaign, the netroots, MoveOn and the Kerry 2004 presidential campaign (which sought to compensate for weaker fundraising than the Republican party with a strong reliance on money and advertising by outside groups). It’s also represented by some aspects of the Tea Party (the ones stressed in Jonathan Rauch’s article. Here, one sees a lot of decentralized activity by activists and interest groups without much in the way of central planning. The advantage of this form of organization is spontaneity, mobilization and the ability to respond quickly to certain kinds of opportunity – the disadvantage is the risk of duplication of effort and difficulties in responding to major organizational challenges that require high levels of coordination.

The second is the coordinated campaign party. Here, I’m not only thinking of traditional parties, but also of the Obama 2007-2008 primary machine and the 2008 Obama electoral campaign. This tries to leverage some of the organizational energy of more freewheeling approaches – but subordinates it as much as possible to a centrally planned campaign with coordinated messaging. The Obama campaign quite deliberately shut down alternative organizational efforts, preferring to concentrate fundraising and message control in its own hands. The advantage here is tight control and ability to respond systematically rather than opportunistically. The disadvantages are the disadvantages of hierarchy – blockages in upwards flows of information, frustrations of possible allies who are shut out of decision-making and so on.

What the Republicans seem to be arriving at in the wake of Citizens United is a third possible mode of organization – the coordinated group party. Here, the traditional party campaign structures play a secondary role. Instead, the major fundraising and electoral expenditures are coordinated among purely private groups, which aren’t at all effectively regulated. The advantage here is obvious – the ability to pump large amounts of unregulated money into the political system and to avoid the complicated rules on coordination of spending with candidates’ campaigns (since this is only a group of ‘private’ and ‘non-political’ organizations talking among themselves, they don’t have to comply). The disadvantage is that when there is e.g. a Presidential campaign, the inability to coordinate with that campaign may pose some real issues.

So for me, there are three interesting questions. The first is which model – if any – wins? That is, not necessarily which model wins out in the current election, but which model proves so attractive over the next decade or so that it reshapes party organization on both sides of the aisle.

The second is: what implications does this have for the regulation of campaign finance? In particular – if the coordinated group party is the winner, then US political parties are likely morph into an attenuated official ‘rump’ that serves as a rubber stamp for the things that only an accredited party can do, attached loosely to a much more important set of independent fundraising organizations that coordinate the important decisions about spending and advertising among themselves.

The third is: what implications does this have for policy? If the key decisions determining who gets financial, organizational and advertising support and who does not, happen within external groups rather than in committees where politicians have at least some leverage, it’s plausible that there are going to be consequences. It could be that there is less coordination on issues than before – a looser structure may bring various conflicts and contradictions to the surface. It could be that there is coordination – but that it involves a different set of issues than those that parties prioritize, or tighter focus on a smaller subset of those issues. It could also be that if the Obama model wins out, we could see a party which is much more focused on the president and his or her preferred agenda than in the past. Much will depend, obviously, on who has control of the money, and whether different groups who can bring money and resources to the table have similar or diverging interests.

I genuinely hadn’t thought about the possibilities of independent groups coordinating among themselves and providing an alternative to traditional forms of party organization. If this takes off, it will be a significant innovation. It will also be one that the Obama campaign (which is likely strongly organizationally invested in the model that won the 2008 election) is going to be unlikely to want to emulate in 2012, for better or worse.

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Looks like political payola decided to cut out the middleman. The tea party base doesn’t want to have anything to do with the old party elites, and the process of purchasing policy has been streamlined for their corporate paymasters. So, what do we need a Republican party for anymore? For that matter, the Blue Dog Democrats are taking it on the chin this election, so it looks like corporations foreign and domestic don’t even need their token Democrats anymore.

I’m with JM. Now that we’re a straight-up corrupt oligarchy, why bother with the expensive, time-wasting political Kabuki? We just need one party. With a nod to Gary Shteyngart (and David Broder) let’s call it the Bipartisan Party.

“The disadvantage is that when there is e.g. a Presidential campaign, the inability to coordinate with that campaign may pose some real issues.”

That disadvantage is only a disadvantage if the regulators can stop the coordination in something close to real time. The problem with that is it’s essentially impossible. The regulators would need to have immense, immediate powers: they would need to be able to shut down a private organization very quickly (within two weeks or so) without the possibility of immediate appeal. Obviously, that would likely be unconstitutional (certainly under this court) as well as highly impractical.

Otherwise, you’ll have to have the regulators running around months or years after the election, trying to prove coordination between groups. At that point, the election will be over, and the winning candidate will not be removed from office unless someone has a video tape of the candidate promising to give Osama bin Laden the nuclear launch codes after the election in exchange for gold ingots (or something equivalent).

I agree. We need to recognize that the United States is an oligarchy. That’s not really controversial at this point. There may be a more nuanced view that the United States is now some sort of mixed regime between oligarchy and republic, but we now need to be clear: if you’re not admitting that the United States is openly at least partially an oligarchy, you’re a fool.

“The disadvantage is that when there is e.g. a Presidential campaign, the inability to coordinate with that campaign may pose some real issues.”

That disadvantage is only a disadvantage if the regulators can stop the coordination in something close to real time.

I don’t think so, because the lack of co-ordination is significantly self-punishing. Look at the Tea Party; yes, they’ve pushed the nominees running on the R ticket somewhat to the right, but they’ve also cost the R’s seats. That may be a trade the activists are happy with, but it isn’t one the establishment will ever be happy with.

After the election, destroy the GOP. Drive a wedge between the mainstream Republican leadership and their nuttiest stupidest voters.

Demand that the Republicans don’t get any tax cuts, unless they put the matching spending cuts in the SAME Congressional bill. So everybody can see what they are planning to trade off.

Because tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Fight that phony rhetoric everywhere: tax cuts do NOT create the economic growth to cover the extra deficits they cause. Rhetoric works, and Rove knows it.

The only way to reduce deficits is to end the tax cuts or reduce spending. They want to complain about the deficits? Make them face it!

Keep your eye on the ball. We are merely going into Battle #2 of a very very long war. So if the economy can’t get much worse, well then, the thing to do is run a full blockade, as the economy slowly creeps back on its own. We have two years to bang them on the head, see if we can get any more sense in there.

Do NOT give in to Republican initiatives, just because they MIGHT cause some growth somewhere — this is the liberal disease: shooting yourself in the foot. No more doing things just because economists think it might be a good idea.

No tax cuts for the wealthy. Lots of detailed arguments on how healthcare really works. No changes to Social Security — let the missing “Trust Fund” come out of the sunsetting Bush tax cuts. No tax cuts at all, unless the Republicans want to put the matching long-term spending cuts in the same bill, for our advice and consent.

The people are worried about the deficits? The Dems have LOWERED the long-term deficits because Obamacare gives Medicare a little haircut to a porkbarrel. So people want lower deficits but no, the Dems are hurting Medicare! What bullcrap. Are you going to let the Republicans cut Social Security and also shift the distribution of taxes onto you more? Stick with the party that defends the safety net, while shaving long term costs.

Capitalishiousness: free markets with a goddamn good safety net!

So “man-up” to the mattresses, ram it to the ramparts, and after the election, start to drive a wedge between the mainstream Republican leadership and their nuttiest stupidest voters. Destroy the GOP! Do it! Why the hell not!

Both parties have been using what Henry calls “uncoordinated group models” (ie interest group politics) for quite some time. For the Dems for example, unions, various corporate interests, and varied interest groups have been providing funding. This ends up working well at the state level where a smaller number of groups are relevant to debate, but less well in larger, national elections.

However, one wonders if the the new coordinated group politics is really all that different from this older model. In this election, a very large proportion of outside money is funnelling through the Chamber and Rove’s groups. While one would assume that this funding is coordinated, the opacity of the process makes it unclear how much control these groups have over anonymous donations. And are these groups more coordinated or just bigger? My guess: group coordination has not changed much, aside from democrats losing the fundraising battle. The fundraising picture will change as much by 2012 as it has since 2008, and these coordinated groups will end up looking fairly uncoordinated.

Because they don’t coordinate absolutely everything they coordinate nothing?

“However, one wonders if the the new coordinated group politics is really all that different from this older model.”

Yes, it is. If you notice, there isn’t much of a GOP as a political party in this discussion. In fact, the GOP is weaker and has less money than the larger single private groups – and the private groups together have something like 10 times the money of the formal party. The GOP is more of a vague group name now than being a political party. The real power lies elsewhere and the GOP itself is a sideshow.

Second, the amounts of money themselves make a structural difference. Yes, certainly under the previous campaign laws, if you put in a certain amount of work, you could donate a lot of money. But it was relatively difficult and involved, and it could backfire – if your candidate’s opponent discovers that you were using a wide variety of fronts before the election, it would hurt your candidate’s electoral chances, bring some heat on you and maybe attract attention from the FEC. You used to need attorneys who were willing to push the envelope and so on. None of that exists anymore.

I can’t imagine a co-ordinated movement running O’Donnell rather than Castle

Coordination is not control. I don’t suspect a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, picking Senate candidates and Oscar winners. I do suspect that people legally forbidden to consult each other are in fact doing so: 501(c)(4) leaders talking to GOP party and candidate organizations about what’s needed where. In fact, I would be genuinely surprised if they were obeying the law. Maybe one day they’ll get sloppy enough to e-mail one another and we’ll get some proof. (Which will be dismissed as an Isolated Incident.)

(In Delaware, they may well have supposed O’Donnell too nutty to win the nomination; didn’t she peak a little late? Rove et al. spoke out against here relatively late, when she suddenly seemed likely to beat Castle.)

In Delaware, they may well have supposed O’Donnell too nutty to win the nomination; didn’t she peak a little late?

The Palin endorsement was the trigger, and while the Vanity Fair piece suggests that a fairly standard wingnut welfare operation surrounds her activity, her endorsements don’t quite fit that model. Delaware has closed primaries and a relatively small registered GOP electoral base, so it didn’t take much to swing it.

Looking more generally from a structural perspective, the new landscape seems to entrench the laundering operations that occurred during election season pre-CU with the brief flowering of otherwise-dormant PACs and 501( c )(4)s. So instead of reactivating Americans For Fluffy Kittens out of a maildrop to run attack ads between Labor Day and election day, then shutting down shop before anyone identifies the funders, you get a much more efficient infrastructure for both co-ordination and anonymity.

What the Republican party reminds me of is an essay I read by a white supremacist complaining about the poor quality of the recruits. The GOP isn’t quite at the “too many glue sniffers” stage but it’s pretty clear that its efforts – planned – to whip up the kooks are not producing optimum results.

Republicans should look to the effectiveness of the Democratic plan to dampen all enthusiasm for guidance.

Well, what they’re aiming for is Getrennt marschieren, vereint schlagen, no? There’s quite a lot to be said for task-organising and having independent groups pursuing specific goals, as long as they all arrive on the same objective at the same time 24 hours before the polls close.

Without disagreeing for a moment that the US is in the grip of oligarchy and that congressional votes are basically for sale, I’d like to point out that no one here is really addressing the central, underpinning issue: why is it that campaign money can reliably, if not perfectly, be translated into citizen votes? If you believe, as everyone here apparently does without dispute, that sufficient cash can, on average, buy elections, then you must also inevitably admit/conclude that the voters themselves are selling their votes — and quite cheaply, at that. The image is of a disconnected, uninformed voter whose decision can be swayed if he/she is simply sufficiently pandered to with a few (hundred) TV commercials over a campaign. I think this is rather a disrespectful view of voters at large; is it really true? State your belief clearly.

All of these discussions of political campaign finance, now greatly amplified by the Citizens United decision, ultimately boil down to this question: why do the voters sell themselves so cheaply? or, do they? Answer that, and you’ll know the right point to split the diamond.

@Landru:The image is of a disconnected, uninformed voter whose decision can be swayed if he/she is simply sufficiently pandered to with a few (hundred) TV commercials over a campaign. I think this is rather a disrespectful view of voters at large; is it really true? State your belief clearly.

What in the American Body Politic, makes you think this is not the case? Most voters are low-information, single/pet issue voters, easily swayed by a 30 second TV spot or forwarded email that plays on their biases.

American voters are disconnected from politics (and the social and economic realities implied) in a uniquely First World way. Nothing in the short term will change enough to disrupt the impenetrable bubble of creature comforts most Americans enjoy. Until the political situation cancels our internet subscription or requires us to sell our flat screen TVs, most Americans will simply react in a knee jerk fashion to whatever half baked political soundbite reaches the inner sanctum and makes them anxious enough to vote.

I think when one is dealing with a political system that is both disinclined and utterly incapable of responding effectively to the needs and wishes of the electorate and has therefore descended almost entirely into Kabuki, one really has to ask how much longer are questions of campaign organisation and mobilisation going to be? Obama seems to have been the last best shot at restoring some basic sanity to a socio-economic order that has become increasingly unjust as well as inefficient both in terms of economic outcomes and generating social stability. Cultural ressentiment and economic insecurity have aligned in such a powerful way that his party is going to get shellacked for applying vital economic measures (TARP, the Stimulus, and HealthCare Reform) in a form that was maximally friendly to conservative policy positions without rendering them utterly meaningless. Plus, these are all outcomes resulting from a political system that is highly resistant to reform itself.

The question is increasingly becoming what’s the best outcome in terms of justice – a series of Republican ascendancies in which the country is virtually destroyed followed by ever shorter Democratic interregna where the damage is temporarily ameliorated, dramatically lengthening the period before decline becomes both undeniable and unstoppable? Or total GOP take over of all governing institutions and a short sharp nose dive into the tar pits?

“All of these discussions of political campaign finance, now greatly amplified by the Citizens United decision, ultimately boil down to this question: why do the voters sell themselves so cheaply? or, do they?”

Because you are pretending they are citizens when they are (and prefer to be) subjects.

“The question is increasingly becoming what’s the best outcome in terms of justice – a series of Republican ascendancies in which the country is virtually destroyed followed by ever shorter Democratic interregna where the damage is temporarily ameliorated, dramatically lengthening the period before decline becomes both undeniable and unstoppable? Or total GOP take over of all governing institutions and a short sharp nose dive into the tar pits?”

Daragh has got it. But us liberals oppose our own best likely solution – that the President can (and probably will) become the President-Monarch.

Without disagreeing for a moment that the US is in the grip of oligarchy and that congressional votes are basically for sale, I’d like to point out that no one here is really addressing the central, underpinning issue: why is it that campaign money can reliably, if not perfectly, be translated into citizen votes? If you believe, as everyone here apparently does without dispute, that sufficient cash can, on average, buy elections, then you must also inevitably admit/conclude that the voters themselves are selling their votes—and quite cheaply, at that.

The voters aren’t “selling their votes”. They don’t gain anything by voting. They’re just responding to advertising. Generally advertising that makes them feel that it would be unacceptable to vote for one of the two options, so they have to vote for the other one.

The image is of a disconnected, uninformed voter whose decision can be swayed if he/she is simply sufficiently pandered to with a few (hundred) TV commercials over a campaign. I think this is rather a disrespectful view of voters at large; is it really true? State your belief clearly.

Well, it works with other forms of advertising. Try replacing “voters” with “people”.

“Daragh has got it. But us liberals oppose our own best likely solution – that the President can (and probably will) become the President-Monarch.”

Not that I disagree with your objectives or diagnosis, but for me the best likely solution is a conservative engineered and overseen major economic collapse and subsequent dissolution of the US as a political entity in its current formation. EG Let the coastal states break off, form their own rationally based economically prosperous republics, and let Oklahoma see what being governed by a Coburn-Inhofe duopoly is REALLY like.

Cryptic Ned: The voters aren’t “selling their votes”. They don’t gain anything by voting. They’re just responding to advertising.

I wouldn’t quite agree that voters don’t gain anything by voting; if sufficiently motivated they can certainly gain a sense of having “struck a blow” for their own side in a war, which can be be quite satisfying. But it’s sort of a distraction from the question I want to ask to phrase it in terms of voters being rewarded or “bought up”. In less metaphorical terms, my question is: why do voters allow themselves to be influenced so significantly by paid political communication? (this includes TV commercials, mailings, phone banks, etc.) Why don’t voters put more effort into making their choices, say by spending time and money to do their own research rather than lazily consuming what is presented to them for free?

You might be tempted to answer “because voters are largely lazy people”. Now, I think that’s a quite contemptuous view of people, and so problematical: if you essentially hold the voters in contempt then you’re never going to approve of any democracy-centered system, and there’s no point in discussing any reforms. I also don’t think it’s factually correct to simply say that most people are lazy or dim-witted and that’s why they do what the TV tells them to. I’m not denying that paid communication has a big influence, but I think the reasons why it succeeds, and why it doesn’t, are complex, and we should seek to understand those reasons rather than just dismissing voters with contempt.

“Most voters are low-information, single/pet issue voters, easily swayed by a 30 second TV spot or forwarded email that plays on their biases.”

I don’t think this makes sense. If you’re a single-issue voter, then low-information is the right state to be in. There’s no point in wasting time figuring out what a candidate’s position is on any other issue than the one you care about. And there’s not much chance that a TV commercial is going to matter; either you match on Issue X or you don’t.

Daragh McDowell 10.26.10 at 8:26 pm
” Not that I disagree with your objectives or diagnosis, but for me the best likely solution is a conservative engineered and overseen major economic collapse and subsequent dissolution of the US as a political entity in its current formation. EG Let the coastal states break off, form their own rationally based economically prosperous republics, and let Oklahoma see what being governed by a Coburn-Inhofe duopoly is REALLY like.”

What I think of as most likely now is simply a continued looting, followed by bailouts (ie., more looting), with frequent post-facto legalizations (de facto or de jure) of the looting, followed by a repeat of the cycle.

Until either (a) the looting ‘elites’ crisis so sharp and deep that the government can’t bail it out in time (especially if Teabagging politicians are playing fillibuster games), or (b) they loot so successfully that the government is no longer capable of a bailout.

Landru, personally I agree that your question is the most interesting one here. This seems like precisely the kind of question that political scientists should be interested in, and surely there’s an extensive literature out there addressing it. What does that literature say?

“but for me the best likely solution is a conservative engineered and overseen major economic collapse and subsequent dissolution of the US as a political entity in its current formation. EG Let the coastal states break off, form their own rationally based economically prosperous republics, and let Oklahoma see what being governed by a Coburn-Inhofe duopoly is REALLY like.”

You presume that the coastal states would be able to successfully transition to a number of separate republics. That would not be a bad solution if it happened. I think that is a big gamble compared to transitioning the President to a king. I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if your proposal fails. Further, the new king will be able to rule Oklahoma quite well – they are not really fit to be citizens, but they might make quite excellent subjects. Indeed, due to their inherent servile natures, I would expect they would prefer to serve the new king, a glorious and noble prince and defender of the faith, rather than live as they currently do, obliged to degrade themselves to any random fool who has money. The Oklahomans need awe-inspiring spectacles. Our liberal regime does not provide this, while the new king will readily do so.

Interest groups have coordinated in elections for a number of years, and this has in the past been more evident on the Democratic side. What we have this election is a reversal, with the GOP working through vaguely independent groups and the Dems working through party committees.

The coordination issue is tricky for these kinds of groups, which is why the Democrats created the larger 527 committees in 2004 to help both coordinate and also to put all commitments on the table.

I would be interesting in seeing anything on HOW the GOP groups are coordinating. But in a sense it is easier if they are not genuine groups — that is, this is not Focus on the Family and the NRA and the Chamber, so much as quasi party groups that have the same donor base.

They don’t gain anything by voting. They’re just responding to advertising. Generally advertising that makes them feel that it would be unacceptable to vote for one of the two options, so they have to vote for the other one.They might make quite excellent subjects. Indeed, due to their inherent servile natures, I would expect they would prefer to serve the new king, a glorious and noble prince and defender of the faith, rather than live as they currently do, obliged to degrade themselves to any random fool who has money.2010 new ugg boots